Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: You don’t have to go to the theater to get your Robert Pattinson fix. We’re looking back on some of the best performances from the one-time vampire, future caped crusader.
The Rover (2014)
David Michôd’s The Rover represented a turning point in Robert Pattinson’s career, being the first of a series of roles in which the English actor subverted his charisma and good looks to play desperate, mentally frazzled characters with criminal pasts. However, his ingenuous, mumbly redneck Rey (short for Reynolds) isn’t the main character of Michôd’s memorably grim post-apocalyptic chase film. That distinction belongs to Eric (Guy Pearce), a violent loner who’s looking for his stolen car—or more specifically, some personal symbolism represented by the contents of its trunk—in the movie’s nihilistic, lawless near future.
Of course, post-apocalyptic imagery involving motor vehicles is an Australian invention that was popularized by George Miller’s Mad Max movies and a vast assortment of Mad Max wannabes and knock-offs that were produced elsewhere throughout the 1980s and ’90s. At least to an outside observer, it always seems to speak to some sort of edge-of-the-world mentality and an unease about one’s own backwaters (evident in pre-Mad Max movies like Wake In Fright and The Cars That Ate Paris) that may be inspired by a vast empty landscape whose shortage of natural predators makes rare humans the alpha threat.
This element of national myth makes sense, because The Rover is functionally a Western, not unlike John Hillcoat’s Nick Cave-penned The Proposition, which also starred Pearce. (Hillcoat went on to adapt The Road; again, it’s an Australian thing.) In Michôd’s film, we find plenty of analogs to the tropes of both classic American Westerns and the sweatier, bloodier, and more fatalistic Westerns of Italy. There are homesteads, bandits, revenge-seekers, and a distant, fortified military presence. Considering that the movie is set after some kind of total economic collapse, it does seem to track with the line that capitalism’s future is going to look a heck of a lot like the past.
It would be an extreme understatement to say that this comes across as grim. The relentlessness of Pearce’s character—a basically nameless protagonist, as he’s only called “Eric” in the credits—is matched by the seeming pointlessness of his personal mission and the view of humanity presented by the movie. As filmmaking, The Rover is engrossing: semi-abandoned production design, desolate backdrops, grungy lighting, downbeat atmosphere, spartan direction, dirt-seamed faces. But it isn’t exactly flattering to our species, which is something of an achievement when the exponents of broken humanity are represented by men who are as precisely handsome as Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson.
Even the meaning of the title speaks to a perverted sense of irony. This might not be one of those apocalyptic scenarios in which the threat of extinction factors in the plot, but one gets the feeling that, in the world of The Rover, such a development would be for the best. In that respect, Rey, a wounded robber who was abandoned by a gang that included his brother (Scoot McNairy), is not only Eric’s foil but also a character with whom we can more easily identify. At the very least, he seems to be capable of guilt. He also delivers the film’s most memorable and surprising grace note by singing along to Keri Hilson’s 2010 ode to inflated self-regard, “Pretty Girl Rock,” on a car radio. (At one point, this writer adopted the song as his alarm ringtone, much to the annoyance of his A.V. Club editor and occasional Toronto Film Festival roommate, A.A. Dowd.)
Unfortunately, Michôd hasn’t made anything as good since, though Joel Edgerton (who co-wrote the story) has established himself as a sturdily reliable presence as an actor. Pattinson, meanwhile, has built up a résumé of implosive, edgy, occasionally vulnerable, thickly accented characters with something to run from in the likes of Good Time, The Lighthouse, and High Life—all of which were released or co-produced by The Rover’s fledgling distributor, A24. If there’s an origin story to his remarkable lead performances throughout the second half of the 2010s, it starts here, in an Australian wasteland with no right or wrong.
Availability: The Rover is available for rental or purchase from Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, Microsoft, Fandango, Flixfling, DirectTV, and VUDU. It can also be streamed on Hulu, Amazon Prime, and SlingTV with a Showtime subscription.
20 Comments
Saw this in the theater and loved it. I’m not normally in the mood for long, pensive character pieces with dramatic landscape shots and minimalist plots, but for some reason it really connected. Although part of it is that I’ll watch (and enjoy) Guy Pearce in literally anything, such as the schlocky Lockout, in which he rescues the President’s daughter from an orbital space prison.
“Guy Pierce rescues the president’s daughter from a space station” is a setup that deserved so, so much better than what “Lockout” delivered.
Counterpoint: Lockout was a corny delight.
I’m always down to revisit schlocky movies, and you and TGGP have convinced me on this one.It would help if I got super high first, right?
We watched while super high, and I can assure you that watching Lockout in such a state is a worthwhile experience.
Yes. Yes it would indeed.
I only watched the first 3/4 of that, but I stand firm in my belief that the French courts got it wrong: it’s not a ripoff of Escape From New York, but instead the middle act of the first Star Wars movie. Guy Pearce is clearly playing a cocky Han Solo knockoff rather than the stoic Snake Plissken, and the President’s daughter is basically a co-lead like Leia rather than a hated McGuffin like Donald Pleasance was.
I’d forgotten all about this and just added it to my list, mostly because of Pearce. He’s mesmerizing. After LA Confidential and Momento I’ll watch literally anything he does. And I do realize he’s done some crap because actors act, but he is never the problem.
This is one of the greatest movies of this century, Seriously.
Even the meaning of the title speaks to a perverted sense of irony.when i saw this in the theater, the trunk opening reveal at the end felt like a rimshot after such an intense and uncompromising film. i think i actually laughed out loud. i love it
Same, I thought it was weird. You’d think that being in the trunk in the postapocalyptic Australian heat would have caused someone to notice what it was, even by the odor.
His performance is such a risky move, that kind of super-mannered mentally challenged character could have easily tipped over into something terrible and offensive. But he totally pulls it off.
I don’t know what it is about Australia that makes us throw out such unrelentingly bleak, depressing movies on a regular basis. You’ve got this, the Hillcoat stuff, The Tracker, and Snowtown, to name only a few. They’re all utterly fantastic (especially The Proposition and Snowtown), but so, so very dark. I felt like a needed a cold shower after Snowtown, even moreso because I grew up in a similar kind of suburbia here.Why is this the Australian stuff that makes it to the festivals and international release? I guess a sort of tone or pattern has been developed, so like the Korean revenge thriller or Scandanavian noir, you have the Australian anti-Western.(This is not a complaint, I love all of it. It’s just the bleakness that I find curious)
I’m glad so many people here enjoyed The Rover, but in the interest of balance I should point out that there are many like myself who were hugely disappointed in it. Pearce is excellent as usual, and Pattinson is good although he does overdo things a little (no doubt in desperation at getting away from pretty-boy roles he’d been locked into). But as a story it doesn’t hang together, the final revelation is ridiculous, and the post-collapse landscape seems to be full of remarkably well-maintained roads even in remote areas.
The post-apocalypse world of The Rover looked an awful lot like 1990’s Oklahoma.
Oh come on, the final reveal is perfect. It’s an indication that Pearce’s character has some human attachments left in him while simultaneously being such a small thing for many people to die over.
There are two things that could have made it work. 1. Put it up front in the movie rather than make it the big revelation. 2. Not with that title.
Was this six years ago? Wow. Time flies.Great movie and performances by both leads. Pattinson has real talent, this and Cosmopolis only reinforced it.
I thought it was weird that Pattinson was supposed to be McNairy’s brother, but had a completely different accent. Why emulate Kenneth Branagh in Wild Wild West instead of the guy you’re working with whose accent is the real deal?
Damnation Alley predated the Mad Max films as most Jan Micael Vincent fans know.